Recipes: Delicious fall dessert

One of my purchases at the Country Living Fair was a cookbook from the Gooseberry Patch. My sister had purchased one earlier in the year, and I had it on my wish list for Amazon. Well, at the Fair they had a great deal: $15 each on their cookbooks or 3 for $40. So my momma and I bought the same while my sister bought their Church Suppers book.

Coming Home with Gooseberry Patch (food to bring family & friends to the table) is filled with wonderful, down home tasty recipes. I have only made two recipes so far, with plans to try out many more. For our Thursday night get-together, I made the Crustless Pumpkin Pie. How delectable! Our friends loved it, we loved it, therefore it is definitely what hubby and I refer to as a “repeat.” It is simple to make and turns out wonderful. I decided to go one step further and use heavy whipping cream to make “homemade” whipped cream. YUM.

Tonight (since I had half a can of pumpkin left, I made the Spiced Pumpkin Bread. I have only nibbled on a couple crumbs, but this is surely a repeat as well. I thought of sharing the recipe here, but I thought that might be copyright infringement or something of the sort. You can find the cookbook on the Gooseberry Patch site, and it is currently on sale.

I look forward to making more recipes from this book, particularly from the Bonfire chapter and Gifts for Giving. That is something else that I adore about Gooseberry Patch books: all the wonderful little craft ideas that are tucked into them. I have one of their Christmas books, but have yet to try out too many of the crafts. It is on my list for idea inspiration.

Here is a recipe I will share, courtesy of my brother and sister and I (we all have put our own additions in this).

Andrew’s Soup

The original (in my brother’s words): a can of mixed veggies, can of beef or chicken broth, can of diced tomatoes. Then add some minced onion, salt, pepper & any other seasoning you like. It’s just something I came up with back in college when I was poor. Oh, you can also add some canned chicken to it.

Sister’s addition: leftover box mac & cheese. It never reheats well, so this is a great use for it! The cheese kind of “falls off” the noodles and mixes with the broth to form a nice cheesy chicken base.

I added into the pot with everything else. Also, I used leftover frozen veggies instead of canned. Still good.

I did not have any canned chicken (must stock up at Aldi’s again!), so I put in crumbled bacon. I also sprinkled in dried parsley. Oh, and I did not have any non-chili ready diced tomatoes so I used a can of stewed tomatoes, slightly drained. It all came together to create a nice, hearty, filling dinner. I made Bisquick biscuits to go with it, too. Great to have on a chilly fall evening.